Arepa (Apt REPository Assistant) is a suite of tools to manage a Debian package repository.
It has the following features:

Manages the whole process after a package arrives to the upload queue (say,
after being uploaded by dput): checking its signature,
approving it,
re-building it from source,
updating the repository and signing it,
and optionally sending the repository changes to another server (e.g.
the production static web server serving the repository).

You approve source packages,
which then are compiled to any combination of architecture and distribution you want.

Integration with several tools,
including reprepro for repository maintenance and sbuild for the autobuilders.
You should not need to learn anything else than Arepa commands to manage your repository.

Web interface for package approval,
compilation status and other tasks.

First of all,
you have to know which distribution(s) you want to manage.
Typically,
you would be interested in only one,
maybe two.
For the sake of the example,
let's assume you want to manage two distributions: one called mysqueeze and mylenny.
Each one of those will contain extra packages for the Debian distributions "squeeze" and "lenny" (so they will have to be compiled in those environments).

Once you have decided this,
you also have to decide which aliases your distributions will have.
This is useful because incoming packages for those alias distributions will work.
For example,
you probably want to accept incoming source packages meant for unstable,
so you can say that unstable is an alias for mysqueeze.

Now,
there's another possibility that you might want: having a source package compiled for several distributions.
This doesn't always work of course,
but it's useful in some cases.
In this example,
say that you want source packages meant for unstable compiled for both mysqueeze and mylenny.
In that case,
you can say that unstable is an alias for mysqueeze,
then say that you want binNMUs for all other distributions you want the package compiled for.

Once you have the list of distributions,
along with their aliases and possibly binNMUs triggers,
you can go ahead to the next section.

Once you have a clear idea of the distributions you want,
you have to register them into your repository.
To do that,
simply call arepa-admin with the codename as first parameter and suite as second parameter (optional).
By default it will create a distribution with one component main and two architectures (source and the current architecture as reported by dpkg-architecture -qDEB_BUILD_ARCH).
You can change those defaults,
and even add new fields (like AlsoAcceptFor and similar,
see the reprepro manpage):

The next step is to configure the web interface. Make sure that you can access the application from the URL path /arepa/arepa.cgi and that it works properly. You have a sample configuration file in apache.conf. If you have installed the Debian package, everything should be already in place, and the only step you should follow is:

# a2ensite arepa

Other steps you have to follow in any case:

Configure the users you want to access the application. Open /etc/arepa/users.yml and add a line per user. The passwords should be hashed with MD5. For example, you can use:

echo -n "mypassword" | md5sum -

Configure your sudo so users in the group arepa can execute /usr/bin/arepa sign, /usr/bin/arepa sync and /usr/bin/arepa issynced. You can add these lines in visudo:

Finally, you need to create an autobuilder for every combination of distribution and architecture you want (in this case, let's say mysqueeze/amd64 and mylenny/amd64). If you are in an amd64 environment, you can create a builder for the i386 architecture by passing the special option --arch i386 to arepa-admin createbuilder.

That will create a builder running Debian squeeze in /var/chroot/squeezebuilder. Once it's ready, you might want to make sure that the /etc/apt/sources.list is correct.

IMPORTANT WARNING NOTE: once you have created a builder chroot, it will automatically bind certain files (/etc/passwd and others) from the "host" machine. So, if you rm -rf the chroot, you'll delete /etc/passwd in your machine. Make sure you "uninit" the builder first:

The repository itself. This is a "local" or "staging" copy that the autobuilders will use. As you probably don't want to serve the repository to your real users from the same machine that hosts CGIs and whatnot, you can easily send the repository to the final machine using arepa sync.

At least binNMUs (binary NMUs) don't work with sbuild 0.59 (the version shipped with Ubuntu Lucid Lynx). Both 0.57 (Debian Lenny) and 0.60 (Debian Squeeze) should be fine, although you might get warnings in 0.60 due to the use of old-style configuration key names, needed for Debian Lenny compatibility.

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